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I was recently contacted by online news outfit Xconomy, which was proffering insights from their “Xconomists,” an ad hoc team of editorial advisors, who, in Xconomy’s breathtaking parlance, “represent some of the country’s leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors.” In Xconomy’s words, “these are people whose mindset is all about creating jobs, spurring growth, and solving the world’s toughest problems.” To "crystallize" their insights, Xconomy asked their Xconomists one question: What should students be studying now to prepare for 10 years from now?

Naturally, these wannabe Alvin Tofflers foresaw a wealth of opportunities ahead. All of them answered earnestly without a deeper analysis of the assumptions behind the question. For example, Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, and who, according to Xconomy, is “one of the world’s leading venture capitalists,” suggested that an“updated curriculum should eclipse the archaic view of liberal education still favored by institutions like Harvard and Yale based on a worldview from the 1800s.” In no surprise for a Silicon Valley engineer, Khosla argued for a focus on economics, statistics, mathematics, and programming while making humanities studies in areas like history and literature “optional subjects.” Or, to quote one of Khosla's bytes of perennial wisdom: "Understanding history is interesting, but not as relevant as topics from the Economist." What a wonderfully shallow republic you would engineer, Mr. K (though I am sure the Economist appreciates the plug). May I gently suggest you pick up Mr. Hegel's Philosophy of History to read during lunch breaks at Khosla Ventures. Or, rather, just consult Bill Joy, your fellow Sun Microsystems cofounder, who persuasively argued in a seminal Wired treatise, “Why The Futures Doesn’t Need Us,” that “our most powerful 21st century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species.”

Much-hyped angel investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and now cosmonautEsther Dyson, whom I last saw, along with Ram Das, in the green room at Arianna Huffington’s surreal Shadow Convention, zeroes in on the related imperative to find new tools for extracting meaning from huge amounts of data. Dyson envisions putting the data to work to create everything from 3D personal printers to terra-formed asteroids. Exciting stuff. Unfortunately, deep "meaning” is not found in “data." It is found in transcendence of “data.” And informational obesity is best cured by fasting.

Then there is U.S. Department of Health and Human Services CTO Todd Park, who says flatly, “Students should be studying how to start things—how to create and grow new products, initiatives, ventures, and enterprises—a skill set that never goes out of style.” Whoa, wonderfully imaginative, Mr. Park.

In case you haven’t noticed, I'm not very impressed by the insights of the vaunted Xconomists, though I appreciate Xconomy's well-intentioned effort.

You see, when I was a young man of 18, I didn’t think about what content I should be studying to prepare for anything, let alone a specific career ten years hence. To me, the Xconomy question itself would have smacked of unquestioning consumerism, settling down, caving in, a life of quotidian misery and "quiet desperation." I didn’t even want to attend college (Richard and Beverly Crotty had other ideas). Hard-core policy debate training, education at a relatively sound Catholic grade school and Jesuit high school, an inquisitive mind, and a strong entrepreneurial work ethic were all I needed to begin my adult odyssey.

However, times have changed since I was 18. In the past three decades, a virulent pragmatism has infected high school graduates. The prevailing mantra is that one no longer attends college to enjoy the life of the mind, to read and discuss the great books of world civilization, to ask deep questions, to fearlessly tackle any subject, to ruthlessly ponder who one is and from where one originated. One goes to college because it will lead to a high-paying, and incidentally fulfilling, “job.”

No questioning of whether this job is inherently worthwhile, no critical thinking about what kind of society such a job enables, or what ends such a job might serve. Back in the late 70s and early 80s I questioned the whole edifice behind “getting a job,” the raison d’etre of “being employed.” the why and wherefore of so-called “occupations.”

I reasoned, a trifle naively, that we would need fewer doctors, hospitals, drugs, surgeries, and other "heroic" measures, if we vigilantly healed ourselves via diet, exercise, meditation, yoga, massage, and quality time in nature. We would not need as many trash collectors and waste dumpsites, let alone environmental inspectors, if we were better stewards of our environment. We would not need so many lawyers if we proactively forestalled conflicts within ourselves and through non-legal dispute-resolution in conflicts with each other. If we worked to become less dualistic in our thinking, less litigious by nature, less confrontational, and more self-sufficient, we would see a drop in demand for governmental redress and a concomittant drop in government workers to babysit our litany of "needs." If we all walked more, biked more, and regularly used mass transit, we would need fewer workers to build and monitor our carbon-based economy. And if we got to know our neighbors, walked our neighborhoods, and creatively addressed problems through ad hoc citizen involvement, we would not only break down distinctions of wealth, race, and orientation, but we would see a decreased need for draconian police intervention into our private lives. I understood instinctively that Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian values were complimentary when they centered on the goals of self-education, self-regulation, and expanding human freedom.

Unfortunately, for most of the planet, the question animating education today has become reductively Maslowian: what occupation will enable me to comfortably eat, drink, sleep, and provide for the needs of myself and those I love, damn the consequences for freedom and the commonweal? Given that for most of the planet these base level hierarchical needs are by no means guaranteed, this quantum shift towards a pragmatic view of education is not surprising. It is undoubtedly why Chinese students routinely outperform American students in standard measures of academic excellence. Their hunger for material advancement is palpable and is reflected in their outsized academic and economic drive. But they live in an authoritarian one-party state that, for all its admirable pluck, is decidedly lacking in the unfettered freedom to question, especially government policy on free speech, free press, free religion, free association, and the three T's: Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen Square.